


fall to your knees (bring on the rapture)

by Riathel



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (But he doesn't deserve it), (specifically) - Freeform, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Classic Doctor Who References, Cock & Ball Torture, Dacryphilia, Emetophilia, Enthusiastic Consent, Episode: s03e12 The Sound of Drums, Except there's too much plot, Extremely Dubious Consent, It's both somehow, M/M, Martha Jones Deserves Better, Mindfuck, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Public Blow Jobs, Public Humiliation, The Doctor (Doctor Who) Needs a Hug, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:01:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25802530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riathel/pseuds/Riathel
Summary: “It’s that sound,” the Doctor seizes on the idea, lit by the surety of it all. It has to be the sound. The four beat. His hearts are beating it out now in an ugly, heavy rhythm. “The sound in your head.” There’s a growing softness in the face of the only other Time Lord in creation. It fills him with giddy hysteria, the overwhelming certainty, because he knows what he has to do, he knows what’s being asked of him and he can offer it freely: “What if I could help?”The Master scoffs, harsh and hard, and rolls his eyes. “Oh, how to shut him up?”--(Aka, the Master finds another way to shut the Doctor up.)
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	fall to your knees (bring on the rapture)

Things are not going necessarily according to plan. Not that the Doctor’s plan wasn’t flexible — but it had involved less of being wrestled to the floor of the Valiant by two armed guards. At least in the second and third drafts, anyway. He’s halfway through his fourth amendment (to what had seemed like a very good plan to begin with) and rapidly finding there’s not much else he _can_ do now, except, well.

Beg.

“Master,” the name hums in his throat, but he pushes on, he has to say it, he has to get through, “just calm down—just _look_ at what you’re doing. Just stop.” The Master is looking at him with hawkish intent, the rest of the room seemingly forgotten: but it’s always been about the two of them, hasn’t it? “If you could see yourself—”

The Master’s concentration flickers back to the TV camera; it’s like losing the sun behind a cloud. The Doctor freezes. That hadn’t been the right thing to say. He’s managed to lose him.

“Oh, do _excuse_ me,” the Master says, all false concern and airs to the millions watching, “Little bit of personal business. Back in a minute!” And then the full weight of his attention is back on the Doctor; he brightens in response. Maybe it had been the right thing to say. There is a way, here, that he can negotiate through the mess that they’re in. They can still fix this. “Let him go.”

The guards release his arms, but the Doctor stays low to the ground. It’s the safest place at the moment, for everyone’s sake — he can't risk standing and someone being killed more permanently than Jack. His brain floods with all possible permutations of syntax, of concepts, of appeals to vanity, reason, shared history, bargaining chips, something, _anything_ that will make the Master pay attention past the, the—

“It’s that sound,” the Doctor seizes on the idea, lit by the surety of it all. It has to be the sound. The four beat. His hearts are beating it out now in an ugly, heavy rhythm. “The sound in your head.” There’s a growing softness in the face of the only other Time Lord in creation. It fills him with giddy hysteria, the overwhelming certainty, because he knows what he has to do, he knows what’s being asked of him and he can offer it freely: “What if I could help?”

The Master scoffs, harsh and hard, and rolls his eyes. “Oh, how to shut him up?”

Cold fear prickles in the base of the Doctor’s spine. Has he miscalculated? Hadn’t that been the point of the phone call? Isn’t it the point of this entire thing? A cry, however commanding, for help? This is not some game where he can make a false move and expect them all to come out unscathed on the other side — the paradox machine hasn’t activated yet. Any death now is forever.

“I _know_ ,” the Master says brightly. “Trip down memory lane!” He’s sitting on the middle of the steps leading up to the flight deck, and he makes it look like a throne. Then again, he once made a prison cell look like a palace. “Come here.” The warring hope and dread racing through the Doctor are uncooperative companions. He moves to rise, and the Master snaps, “Back on your knees or I’ll shoot someone who won’t bounce back. Quickly, Doctor. _Crawl_.”

Here they are again. Playing the game by all the same rules. A jolt of sensation shivers through his nervous system. He wants to refuse. Wants to struggle and bluster and demand and deny — but he can’t, not with all these people around. There’s no choice to be made here except one he already made a long time ago. _Your humiliation for their lives, Doctor; an equitable trade, surely._

He gets on his hands and knees and he crawls. The floor stings the thin cartilage of his knees, his hands prickling against the layer of grit and grime normally underfoot — he’s pretty sure he’s picked up the ashes of the former US President in the short journey to the base of the stairs.

And then he waits. Perched on his haunches like a performing animal. He can’t tamp down the shame that chokes in his throat. Everyone looks at him — they can’t understand, they don't know about the centuries of their game that’s been played, throughout time, planets, universes, deaths, so many deaths.

He hopes Martha isn’t looking at him. He knows she is.

“Oh, Doctor, don’t glare,” the Master scolds, smiling. Of course he’s enjoying this. “Your face will get stuck like that and then how will you help me?”

He leans forward, and the Doctor visibly wavers, thinking he might be touched, or petted, or stroked and the thought is almost too overlarge with possibility, setting his neurons alight until they’re screaming fire and the fourth draft of the plan goes the same way as its siblings. He doesn’t know what he wants, but there’s a surreal quality to the way that air moves against the ashen-coated surface of his body.

“Please,” the Doctor says, as no touch comes, no rescue from the enormity of feeling inside him. There has to be a plan. He came up with one before, a lifetime ago, he just can’t put his aching mind to it. Everything's too much. He defaults: “Please just tell me what you need. I can help.”

“Maybe you can’t,” the Master replies, softly, as if they’re the only ones in the room. The space between them, so universally insignificant, feels even smaller, like the excess atoms between them have been vacuumed out and all that remains is just their essential matter. Maybe this is all fake, and they’re trapped in a confessional dial, waiting out the end of the universe, but that feels alright. It feels like it could be another kind of freedom.

“Whatever you need,” the Doctor says. Words feel cumbersome. Simplistic. The weight of feeling inside him is too much for English, but he shies from using their extinct tongue by merit of having been its murderer in the first place. “Whatever you need, please, Master, tell me.”

The slow grin on the Master’s face is encouraging. Hope blooms beneath his chest, tight and painful as ever. It feels good, like progress.

“Fan- _tas_ -tic,” the Master says unexpectedly, and the thrill that flares through him physically aches, “you really are out-heroing yourself this time.” He settles back on his elbows, one leg stretching to the first step. “Come on, then,” he adds. “I’m on a schedule.”

It’s been so long since the Doctor felt the touch of someone who vibrated along the same temporal frequencies, someone real and vibrant and humming with energy, that he shudders as the Master’s foot brushes against his suit. The world is slipping underneath him, hope and want bearing down in the dizzying way that makes him feel like he might be the one trapped, and the Master the confessional dial.

He’s not sure if that changes the outcome.

“What,” his voice is hoarse, “What do you —”

Two hands in his hair rip him forward. The sudden excess of contact is so much, so full, that tears spring to his eyes, already overcome, so grateful it terrifies him. His hands shoot forward to brace himself on the steps, knuckles stinging when they graze against sharp aluminium plates. Braced as he is, he’s still mostly resting in the Master's lap.

“Maybe that will jog your memory, mmm?” the Master prompts. “No? This regeneration is so _dull_ , I really — _ksss_!”

The hug is as much an instinct as it is a choice. His arms wrap around the Master’s hips, his face burrows into a white-shirted abdomen, and his body shakes with the sobs that feel as if they come from a place deeper and darker than his chest.

“Doctor,” the Master says, in a growl of consonants and danger that should send him running. “Get. Off.”

He can’t. He can’t move. That might shatter this whole thing. It would shatter him, he knows, he can be sure of that. A knee presses into his chest, threatening his air intake, but the pained sobbing is already doing most of the damage and he _won_ _’_ _t_ , he won’t move, he won’t let go this time.

“Get up,” it’s a snarl, and fingers are scratching at the base of his head, his neck, anywhere there’s a spare bit of flesh to hurt. “ _Get up_.”

He clings on. His arms are burning. Someone is still wailing in his voice, howling out wordless screams of anguish and fear, ineffectually muffled by a cotton shirt.

“You’re hurting him!” someone else says, from some distant place, far outside of his narrowed sphere of existence.

“Restrain her,” fingers dig into his chin and tilt his head upwards, out of the comforting blankness of white eternity. “Even for you,” the Master continues in a lower voice, “even for you, this is pathetic.”

Then the sun burns in his eyes, shining with such bright triumph that the Doctor hiccups, his throat closing.

“I really have to thank you, Doctor,” the Master continues, “you’ve already proven my point _admirably_. But we've still got time.” He pauses and his fingers gentle, swiping away at tears. “Good boy,” he adds, a throw-away bit of affection that settles over the Doctor like a funerary shroud, reassuring, heavy, and with an undeniable chill.

Nails press into the sensitive skin at his neck, digging, pulling, cutting in a sharp sting of pain. The hand cupping his face drops to his tie, wraps it loosely around like the Master’s admiring the pattern, and the Doctor chokes as it’s yanked.

“Nice look, that,” the Master says idly, checking his watch as though he needs it to track time. “Might have to get you a proper choke-chain. I’ll put it on the shopping list. Forty-five seconds, Doctor,” his hand slips down off the tie, undoes the fly on his trousers, slides himself free, and it’s suddenly, horrifically clear what he wants, what he expects the Doctor to give him, and he can’t, he can’t do it, not this. The situation is spiralling out of his control, if he ever had any; he feels it bubbling up inside of him, the panic, the revulsion, the shame, he can’t, he won’t—

There’s a thin voice making wretched sounds, high moans, thin whimpers — it’s him, he realises, as he tries to wrap his vocal cords in a denial. “I, I,” it stutters, _he_ stutters. It’s hard to know what’s him, what’s real, and what isn’t. He hadn’t meant for this to twist so poorly, for their game to have taken on a darker meaning since the War, since he— “Please don’t do this - there’s still time, you said we’ve still got time, we can—”

He chokes again as he’s pulled forward. The tie cuts into his neck, making it impossible to even beg.

“For-ty,” the Master sings, his voice rich with amusement, then it drops, softens, “Come on, Doctor, save the _world_. Be a good little hero.” His hand rests on the Doctor’s neck, stroking the raw marks he’d made not ten seconds prior, soothing them away, as if only he controls the Doctor’s pain, the Doctor’s comfort. The Master’s voice is a low hum of promise: “Be the good little self-sacrificing hero, or I’ll kill everyone in this room, and then everyone in this city, and everyone on this miserable planet that you _love_ so much. Or,” he pauses, sneering, “are we too proud for that, _my Lord Doctor_?”

Something tight inside of him shrinks at the title. He wants to hide. He wants to run from here, from what he’s done, from the only other person in the universe who can measure his soul and find him wanting.

He shudders, a strangled sob tearing free from his chest and burning his throat with cowardice.

“Thirty-five,” the Master says. His hand threads through the Doctor’s hair, tugging lightly at the tips before snaking down into his roots. “Your eternal devotion isn’t worth one little blowjob? There’s inflation for you.” His voice hardens, “Don’t disappoint me.”

It’s not a choice, the Doctor says to himself. It’s not a choice. The words haunt him. _An equitable trade, surely._

“You’ve never—all this time you've not once—” He swallows down bile. It’s been centuries.

“Oh, shut up,” the Master snaps, jerking his head down until his lips almost brush the tip of the Master’s cock.

The tightness inside of the Doctor trembles. There’s a pulsing in his head, the Master’s thoughts guarded, but his presence overwhelming, overstimulating. The Doctor tries to breathe in, lips parting, unable to without the air inside him hitching, like his chest has been superheated. He has become that millisecond of first striking a match, phosphorus ignited, oxygen consumed, air compressed.

The smell of the Master is heady, all animalic base notes, the bright sting of artron energy, almost citrus-like. The Doctor doesn’t want this — he’s never craved something as terrible — he’s never _been_ as terrible. He can feel every system inside of him straining to break free, to run, to leave the Earth to the Master, to find some dead, dried out husk of a world to sit and weep and never leave, to exile himself to some far-flung place, as if he can run away from everything he’s done, everything he’s been, everything he _is_.

He breaks that tiny bit further and bends.

The Master groans appreciatively as the Doctor lowers his mouth onto his cock. The hand in the Doctor’s hair tightens, pressing him down almost reflexively, a little further, until he almost has the whole thing swallowed. It’s slightly soft in his mouth, only a little hardness starting to creep into the muscle underneath. Tears prick at his eyes again, but he’s feeling like someone has cut him free from anything solid, anything meaningful, anything outside of the sensation of his throat convulsing and relaxing to ease the cock further down.

It strikes him as unbearably funny that the Master should smell like he always has. Several centuries, more lives, a whole new regeneration cycle, none of these have changed that fundamental, rich tang. In the first century away from Gallifrey, the Doctor would catch a phantom breath of that smell and feel three-quarters angry at the way it filled him with homesickness. The way that it pooled at the back of his tongue, the way that the TARDIS, with her curious, probing evaluations of him, would recreate it through the ventilation.

And now the same feeling makes him gag, saliva bubbling up in his mouth and seeping out onto the Master's black trousers before he can manage to swallow some of it back. He doesn’t dare to look up. Concentrating on the feeling of the Master’s skin in his mouth is the only thing that will anchor him; the clean taste of it after so long; the slow press of him against the Doctor’s tongue; the way his own left hand digs into the stair’s plating; his attempts to ignore the rising vomit in the back of his throat.

If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that they’re somewhere else. Back on Gallifrey maybe — no, too many unhappy memories, too much grief — somewhere else, the TARDIS ( _shrieking at him, her insides cannibalised, the cloister tol_ _ling_ ) — no. No. There’s nowhere else they can be. No pleasant escape from the feeling of the whole world watching him, braced on his hands and knees, sucking the Master’s cock.

The Master laughs, a little huff of amusement. Like this is some sort of private joke. Something they’ll reminisce about fondly in the centuries to come. But this isn’t like the old days. There is something here, now, some undercurrent of real malice and hatred, that has permeated what was once just their little game.

“You know, it really has been far, far too long,” he says, conversationally. “Don’t you think?”

It’s not clear if he’s expecting a response, but the Doctor groans all the same.

The Master says, “I thought you might agree.” His voice is soft. As if he’s weighing something up. Pensive, almost, and then it isn’t: it’s jibing and knowingly cruel and so familiarly unfamiliar that the Doctor’s hearts stutter.

“My _dear_ Doctor,” the Master croons.

The Doctor shivers. The familiar urge to cry wells up and then deflates, painlessly, sinking back into his numbness like a droplet of water settling into the body of a lake. There’s no point in crying. All his efforts to reignite that mercurial spark of compassion in his one-time friend have failed so far; why should a few tears now make any difference?

It isn’t until the Master presses a ( _pristine,_ _leather, black, no air, saliva po_ _oling in his mouth_ ) shoe between his legs that the Doctor feels himself responding. The unfulfilled ache inside of him unfurls; his hips buck into the touch before he can stop himself.

“If you don’t start sucking properly, you know what will happen,” the Master warns. The hard leather of his shoe grinds in further, as if to cement the threat.

The Doctor’s hearts flip. For one moment his brain locks onto the idea, imagining the pain — even at such an awkward angle, it would be terrible, blinding. His mouth relaxes further, lips going slack at the thought. It would cripple him, even if only momentarily; he would gasp for air where there was none to be found. Then the Master might get bored and start fucking into his mouth, sating his need for this to be forced on him, for allowance given, to not be made to do this willingly. It has gone like this so many times before that the thought is almost comforting. How many times he has choked on denials, even as the Master’s come paints the inside of his mouth and mixes with his own bile.

The weight in his mouth swells, until it nudges against the back of his throat. Tight, and hot, and trapping. Trapped. He’s trapped, again, playing out another of the Master’s endless displays of control. Another plan in which the Doctor is exactly where he wants him. And usually, he would have come up with some brilliant reversal by now, something unexpected, something relying on the Master’s fatal flaw, the one thing he can be sure of: the Master wants to beat him more than the Master wants to win.

Except this time, they are both so wildly beyond their usual scope, that the Doctor feels like he’s in permanent free-fall. The fingers at the base of his skull should be crushing, he thinks, some pain to ground him to reality. But they’re not. They’re deceptively gentle, rubbing against the sensitive skin below his occipital bone.

He wants pain. He wants to hate every moment of this. He wants to pull away, say something clever, be something better, save everyone, and privately, later, alone, re-knit the frayed edges of his heart in a way that erases remembering how much he once ( _still_ ) loves him.

But he can’t. He can’t allow himself the luxury of denial. He has to be good, he has to please the Master. It doesn’t matter that what the Master wants has always been slightly out of reach with what the Doctor can provide. He must do everything he can, everything he is expected to do, everything that is expected of him: enthusiasm, obedience, submission.

And that is what he gives.

“If I can’t hear you choking, Doctor, you aren’t doing it _properly_ ,” his one-time friend sneers, even as he gently strokes the Doctor's head.

The whiplash of the Master’s moods with his behaviours disorients the Doctor even further. He doesn’t know where his enemy starts and his friend ends, at what point in their shared history he can point to and say, ‘this was where it all changed.’ There are not enough discrete times where he could have _done_ something: and yet, there are also too many. A litany of betrayals, schemes, lies — worse still, the moments of real, fond connection between them in the midst of these. Stroking up against the Master in that naval base storeroom even as he planned to annihilate humanity. Being soothed with a perfect antidote for regeneration sickness, one precipitated by his own, cruel malice. Sarn. Uxarieus. The Axons. Draconia.

But their eternal conflict has come to jeopardise Earth, again, again. Countless times the Master has savaged the planet, torn between wanton destruction and his consuming desire for domination. It’s the Doctor’s fondness of Earth that makes the Master loathe it so intensely, he knows; in the same way he knows the Master must still, in some way, love him for how violent and fanatical his hatred is.

The fact that the Doctor has never asked, never wanted to be loved like this has never stopped the Master from doing it all the same. He has turned the Doctor into his personal God, and his wanton destruction of the universe is nothing but a hecatomb, an oblation, demanding response when all the Doctor wants to do is turn a blind eye to it.

He has always feared that being by the Master’s side would involve, by necessity, being a part of his plans for universal dominion. But the Doctor can’t find the flare of revulsion he had once held so close to his hearts at the thought. Now that he isn’t the last one ( _isn’t alone any more_ ) what else matters? He can temper the Master, he knows, bring some element of benevolence to their empire—

He gags around the cock in his mouth, saliva dribbling from his mouth freely now. Swallowing it all back is harder than letting it just drip to the floor. The Master swipes his fingers through it, smearing it across the Doctor’s face, into his hair, giggling quietly. He wants to smile too, and he makes his best effort with his cheeks already stretched so full and so wide.

It’s becoming such an effortless concept to him now — their empire. Like a truth he has been avoiding for too long, a sense that this is the only future that was ever possible to them. There is a ghost of a feeling in him, something that tastes sharp, a terrified disgust. But it seems so distant, so difficult to think about when he can just suck, and lick, and let himself give in further to the fierce, giddy happiness that now pushes itself on him so relentlessly. Happy: he is so, so happy. There has never been a moment where he felt more right, more at peace, than here, servicing his Master.

“Aaaand, five-four-three-two-one,” the Master rattles off in under a second. “Lucy, be a sweetheart and hit that red button for me. I’d do it myself but I _really_ have to learn to delegate.” He grins, and it strikes the Doctor as being so awful and so lovely all at once, such a genuine smile. “And I suppose you are their step-mum.”

For a moment, the Doctor’s uncomplicated happiness wavers. Fear, disbelief, and horror surge through him in a burst too strong to be contained by the hypnotic control that must have been easing over him, and he wrenches himself off the Master with a slick _po_ _p_. But the Master isn’t focussed on him anymore; he looks out of the Valiant’s main window, like he’s waiting for something.

The Doctor dilates his subjective time, slowing it by a magnitude of fifteen, to give himself space to think. In a second and a half, he can fit in at least a few minutes, something he’s come to rely on more and more often. They’re crucial. He needs to pause, needs to determine what he’s missed. What can the paradox machine, filled with so much power and rage, be needed for? What are the Toclafane? _Think, think, stupid Doctor, think!_

 _Jack_ , he flings the psychic call a touch roughly, feels the other man start to life with a grinding that rends time and space into reality and unreality. He tries to ignore the reactive nausea rising in his throat. It’s dangerous, what he wants to do, but what isn’t? If he can find any way to cripple the paradox machine, he’ll do it, even if he has to throw an abomination of time itself at his TARDIS and hope it doesn’t kill them both in the end. _Jack, I need you, please, we haven't got much—_

 _Time?_ suggests a nasty, mocking voice inside of him.

With a psychic lurch that feels like being dunked in cold water, the Master grabs him by the hair, thrusts back into his mouth with a staggering force, and begins to drag his subjective time forward.

 _No. Out_ _of time,_ the Doctor realises, filled with the terror of it. His jaw aches, his mind aches, his _hearts_ ache. He’s been careless, and now everyone is going to suffer for it.

He’s got seconds instead of minutes, the Master clawing him forward in the team stream with every heartsbeat. Lucy’s finger is drifting towards that button. The Doctor can’t even call out for her to stop, he’s gagging on pre-come and drool and his own horror.

The only thing he can do is—

> forced himself into the brain of _doctorpleasewillyoubeokay_ and replaced every basic impulse with _runsurvivehidekeephersafe_ and knew, at least, he won't ever regret that
> 
> the noise of the vortex manipulator lost over the screaming music, the drums
> 
> she was safe
> 
> they won’t ever forgive him
> 
> he wondered if he would see them again
> 
> none of them would survive this the same
> 
> all the grief he had left

—send one last message.

“Come _on_ ,” the Master snarls, seizing control of the time dilation and severing the Doctor’s link to Jack, “you don’t want to miss the end of the world, do you?”

Here it comes.

Lucy touches the button, sluggishly, and the first grinding beats of the song play in increasing tempo, getting louder and louder. The Master’s laughing, screaming with it, head tipped back, hysterical, beatific — and the sky begins to split apart.

He’s not holding back any more; one hand clamps around the Doctor’s head, his legs shifting to accommodate, his other hand resting, spider-wide, across the Doctor’s temples. From the front and the back he has the Doctor cornered, and they both know it. He gives up on any pretense of tenderness and just starts fucking into the Doctor’s mouth, hard, deep, hitting the back of his throat with every stroke.

The change in tempo makes the Doctor retch. He throws up before the seventh stroke, his epiglottis raw and chafed. Bile and saliva and half-digested chips all over the Master’s designer shoes, and all the Master keeps doing is _laughing_.

The Doctor can’t stop himself from thinking it didn’t, _doesn’t_ , have to end like this, if he’d only been quicker, or smarter, or better — now or one of the hundreds, thousands of times they might have stopped this. It aches. He’s become so used to aching lately, but this is an old hurt turned fresh, and the stab of it sends him reeling.

There is only one thing left that he can do. The Master is too good of a telepath to be able to trust his own mind to hide what he must. If he can't find a way to shield himself, then everything, all this suffering, Jack, the horrors he know will happen, Martha — all of it will be for nothing. He can force the knowledge into the future, an old Gallifreyan mind-trick, but doesn’t know when he needs to remember it. There has to be something else he can do, some other way that he can ensure they stay safe.

He can already feel the Master beginning to influence him, sinking into the back of his mind like spreading inkblots, more and more and more and...

And they do say the best defense is a good offense.

He forces the knowledge down into the furthest reaches of who he is, beyond all conscious ability of recall, until it feels like trying to look at a perception filter. He covers his thoughts in barbs, surrounds his brain with the strongest emotions, _hatredloathing_ _lustlove_ , and that ever-enveloping freedom draws over him. He’s straining to keep all his thoughts violent and primal, straining against that wave of peace. So happy, he thinks, suddenly sleepy; he would be so happy giving in, letting it all drop, letting his Master—

The Master recoils back into the stairs when the Doctor lashes out mentally; he hisses angrily, tears the Doctor off his cock with a kick to the chest, tucks his erection back into his trousers and zips them up. The Doctor barely has half a minute to pant, coughing up more vomit, before the Master is on him again.

“Your will against mine, Doctor?” he sneers, driving the quote in with another savage kick to the stomach. “I’ve won already, idiot; your precious Earth is mine and you didn’t stop it in time. Poor, slow Doctor, you’ve gotten _rusty_ in your old age.” He kneels down, caresses the side of the Doctor’s face. “I could make your body match your tired little brain. I have that technology,” he adds, like they’re at the Academy, catching up between classes, “Lazarus Labs, you remember, that funny little sociopath. Thought he was so clever, didn’t he? I liked him — well, as much as you can like these humans. I could show them all what it’s really like, to be clever. I could show them what time has done to _you_.” He fingers his laser screwdriver. “All of your years, in full technicolour and surround sound.”

“You wouldn’t,” the Doctor says, soft, the words wheezing from him. He needs more contact, hopes he can goad the Master into it. He needs more: to do better, to have longer, to try and be patient. Lashing out wildly won’t do anything.

He needs—he needs the Master to be inside of him.

The thought of that is unexpected but, as it turns to the thought of being pinned down and fucked, he realises it’s so, so good. It’s all he wants. His cock is stirring, warm tingles in his abdomen shooting through his body. He throbs with the wanting, squirms into the hardwood flooring. Realises he’s panting, skin flushing, drooling saliva and the leftover strings of vomit.

The Master rises, stepping away from him, and he whines, instinctively. Can’t bite back on the sound, on the need.

“But I don’t need to do that,” the Master continues, his slitted eyes the only sign he heard the jibe, “Bit boring, really, making you all wretched and wrinkly, when you’re _prettier_ —” at that the Doctor moans, writhing onto his side, turned towards his Master, feeling electric, “—like this. Say thank you.”

The syllables are forming on his thick tongue before he blinks, shifts away, comes back to himself. No. No, he can’t—

The Master’s next kick lands square on his groin; the Doctor shrieks with all the air leaving his lungs. It’s every bit as painful as he thought earlier. Stark. Blinding. Like he’s been pierced with glass and left to bleed out, his cock throbbing, balls over tight and aching. It’s all he can think about, all he is; the pain of it so destabilising he loses hold of his concentration and his weaponised thoughts fade into the fog.

“Say thank you,” the Master repeats, calmly.

“Thank you, thank you,” he sobs. He cries out, near to another scream, when the Master presses a foot on his groin. There’s no real weight, but he hurts so vividly that even the light pressure feels like being split open, as though he’s baking under a hot sun.

“Say it properly.”

_“Thank you, Master.”_

“Excellent. Even _you_ can make a good pet if you put your mind to it. Let’s try that again.”

He struggles to slide his mind around the surety he had before, trying to find anything beyond the pain.

The next kick to his balls is somehow worse. He sobs and chokes out a muffled scream, mouth filling with blood. Another kick; his skin is hot, over burnt, so hot, so hot, he can’t take it, he can’t; another kick; he howls with pain, trying to squirm away, even as his body remains rigid and unmoving. Why can’t he run? All he wants to do is flee, find some escape from this.

“Did you bite your tongue off?” the Master asks, idly. It’s not another kick, but it has the same weight of danger. “I didn’t hear any thank yous."

“Th,” the Doctor’s voice breaks, pitching low, cracking into an ugly sob. His balls are throbbing. His mind feels scoured of almost everything, so cleansed by pain that purpose is beyond him. “Thank you, Master.”

The Master chuckles, his low laugh at odds with the manic fascination in his eyes. It drives a real, undeniable fear into the Doctor. Something his brain is still struggling to dissect. How can someone enjoy doing this? It’s too much. He aches. His breathing is growing shallow, shaky, little panicked huffs of air. The Master breaks his sluggish concentration:

“You must have forgotten how to count, too.”

He wonders, briefly, what that means; then the Master drives another kick in, and it fails to matter, the pain is too much, another kick, and then another and another and another, all in rapid-fire, he’s screaming, but he can’t move, he can’t scream, he can’t breathe, it won’t ever stop, not until he dies, he wants to die—

“Thank you, Master,” he wails, and the pain stops. That’s good, something he can cling on to. He repeats it again, a bleary mumble of syllables, sliding around his mouth. His lips are plush with fluids, the most recent of them blood. It’s almost cutting off his throat; he gurgles around it. “Thank you, Master,” he repeats, a fourth time, shuddering, fearing more pain.

Relief is almost gutting as a feeling; no more kicks. Instead, the Master draws in closer, presents that shiny, black shoe. The Doctor doesn’t know why. It catches the light so nicely, he can see his reflection in it. Tearstained, snotty, red-faced, terrified. It’s surreal. There’s a floaty, high feeling within him. Feels so good. Doesn’t know why he’d be scared.

“Show me how thankful you are,” the Master says. It sounds so simple, and the Doctor wants to, so desperately, but he doesn’t know how.

“Thank you, Master?” he tries, again. All he wants is to please his Master. A slim thread of discomfort swells within him, like he’s missed an obvious out. It’s at the underbelly of that peaceful oblivion: clinging onto his conscious mind despite the prolonged assault.

The Master gives an exaggerated sigh, and kicks him in the jaw. It barely registers as a flicker to the pain that still blooms inside of him. “Boring, boring, boring,” the Master says, pulling away. “I should’ve gone with my first plan, maybe then you’d give me more to play with. Shall I start playing with _them_ , Doctor? Let’s say, oooh, a tenth of the population, that suits me nicely.”

Another kick, from nowhere. But it still registers as nothing. Sprawled out on the ground, the Doctor just lies there in the aftermath and starts laughing. Weak, fitful little chuckles that spread into breathless hysterics. The Master rounds on him, furious.

“What? What’s so funny?” In an instant, he’s by the Doctor’s side, heedless of anything else. Kneeling next to him, the Master grabs his face, forces past his token defenses.

He isn’t prepared when the Doctor stabs into him with all the pain, hatred, fear of those kicks. It’s raw fighting, inelegant, but he grabs the Master’s hands, keeps him locked into telepathic connection.

Sulfur rises in the Doctor’s senses. The Master tastes and smells like burnt amber fury. Madness. Supreme, bright rage. He’s almost in awe of how terrible and how primal it is, even when the Master is damaged and significantly weakened. He truly hadn’t expected an attack; he left so much of himself unguarded, reached so intimately into the Doctor, the contact of a lover, not a rival.

 _Who_ ’s _naïve now?_ he winds this thought in a memory of watching the Master burn in Sarn, detaching the grief from it and adding cold relief instead. _You think you’re winning; you think you’ve won. You don’t know what that means._ He grabs the memory of Gallifrey, ashes, the screaming, the silence, the tears that still well in his eyes, and forces it into the Master: _I won. I’ll always win._

The Master backhands him. Jars them both out of contact; the jagged slivers of him catch in the Doctor’s mind and tear their way out. He might have done the same. It’s hard to tell anymore.

He lies on the ground, staring up at the ceiling of the world above him. He might have done that for the rest of time, if the Master hadn’t wrenched him upright (even delirious, even pushing his own reality into a far corner of his mind, he knows that touch.)

“Look,” he snarls, throwing the Doctor towards the glass pane. The Doctor does, obedient in a way that he knows should gall him. For some reason, it’s not enough; the Master twists his head to one side, slamming him into the glass. He pants, tongue halfway out of his mouth, breath filling his vision with opaque condensation. “Watch them die, Doctor. Six hundred _million_ of your favourite little insects,” he snaps his fingers, “ _zap_ , just like that. The Toclafane are such _wonderful_ exterminators. So efficient.”

Below them, the Doctor can see shining lights. Sparks of red, flickering in the darkness. It’s gorgeous. It’s gorgeous and he’s crying. The Master cups his cheek. His mouth presses against the Doctor’s ear.

“Tell me,” he whispers, “did you watch Gallifrey burn?” The Doctor turns back to him, confused. Not a little scared. His eyes are too intent for that soft tone. Too vicious. Too knowing. “Is _this_ what it felt like?”

“I don’t…” his mouth works, stumbling over the words silently. There is something beyond his grasp, something he knows he can’t let himself have. Instead, he holds that intent gaze, seeking for something within it. Too late, those eyes widen, realising, and hands are around his throat, digging into his veins, a mind ripping into his own but he’s already

Gone.

—

Later, he remembers the stifled, pained noise that tore out of Jack; Martha whispering half of his name; the sound of the vortex manipulator giving Earth one last chance. Lucy pressing the button, the music blaring, the Toclafane shredding the planet below as he and the Master tore each other to pieces in the skies above. He’ll replay all the moments he missed, running over the pain of them until he runs out of tears.

Even after that, he holds onto the memory, until the Master catches him restlessly reliving it in an unguarded moment. It’s a blessing that he did, the Doctor realises afterwards, soothed by the Master's fingers stroking through his hair. After determining it has no value to finding Jack or Martha, the Master makes it stop hurting. More and more, the Doctor is remembering how happy he was that day; he isn’t sure why he was so quick to forget before.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very loose fill of this anon meme prompt from the Best Enemies LiveJournal: https://best-enemies.livejournal.com/13938.html?thread=5436786#t5436786
> 
> All love to extryn for betaing and permitting me to groan about this fic for the past year and a bit. Her comments have kept me going.
> 
> This fic has been converted from google docs for free using [AOYeet!](https://aoyeet.space)


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